blazes nearly six thousand buildings have been destroyed but entire neighborhoods reduced to piles of ash. as austrian voters prepare to go to the polls on sunday the country's center left chancellor has warned them against letting the country move to the right christiane canto to rally in vienna that austria was at its most important crossroads in decades. polls show sebastian kurtz of the conservative people's party has the clear frontrunner the thirty one year old foreign minister has won over voters with promises to clamp down on immigration challenging can social democrats for second place is the far right freedom party led by heinz christiane's. the party is anti immigration anti islam and anti european union and could be kingmaker if a coalition is required to form a new government. and

a villain talking about a nuclear weapons free world with martin him released from the international campaign to abolish nuclear weapons i can't. mr humorist i can was founded in two thousand and seven now just a decade later the organizations been awarded the nobel peace prize when you heard the news did you think someone was pulling your leg shots. i never thought we could win the nobel peace prize. but luckily a few people within our organization prepared for the event and they reserved a location here in berlin for a news conference for just in case. i made fun of them very can make fun of me with the head of the announcement i stayed home i didn't even want to iron my shirt

but then i tuned into the live stream and after the first two words international campaign i just hollered jumped up and hugged my roommate and i. saw it still sinking in you helped found i can's german chapter and studied political science what drives you to invest so much energy into the campaign for a world without nuclear weapons. and i first encountered the topic when i was sixteen of course by chance. peace activists organized a student trip to the united nations in vienna for a conference on the nuclear nonproliferation treaty. my school sponsored me and i was able to go along. i've been fascinated by the issue ever since what made a huge impression on me was meeting survivors of hiroshima and nagasaki who

experienced the disaster at a young age when the atomic bombs exploded there in one nine hundred forty five. it was extremely sobering to realize that these eyewitnesses wouldn't be around much longer to tell their story. with the eye and knowing it off the charts among the three. fifty at sandwich and. instead of a world without nuclear weapons we're living in one where it's looking increasingly likely that they might actually be used kim jong un and donald trump are trading threats of nuclear annihilation how close are we took a test. of this if the situation is indeed more critical and dangerous than it's been since the cold war. what's happening between trump and kim jong un the way tensions are being ratcheted up reminds me of the cuban missile crisis. if both sides remain so unyielding and given that

neither side appears to be rational or reasonable and that applies as much to trump is to kim jong un then you do see the danger that this escalation will continue. they'll be more rocket launches more nuclear tests and then at some point someone will use an atomic bomb. your organization icann has been a trailblazer in the drive for a comprehensive u.n. treaty banning nuclear weapons one hundred twenty two countries have signed what is the treaties goal. of. the treaty is goal is to lay a new foundation for the international regulation of nuclear weapons on the basis of international law. the goal is to ban and stigmatize nuclear arms and to send a clear signal that atomic weapons are weapons of mass destruction and that there

is a dreadful and inhumane as other weapons of mass destruction whether biological or chemical there's always been a certain ambiguity about atomic weapons a sense that it's ok for some parties to have them but not ok for others. but it's exactly the nuclear powers and their allies who are the ones who don't want to ratify the treaty so what is the treaty worth. we think they will sign the treaty of course it'll still take a while some will sign the treaty sooner than others i think. but to some voluntarily renouncing nuclear weapons is a sign of weakness and you know there's nothing week about voluntarily renouncing nuclear weapons we've seen that many countries don't believe in this notion that atomic weapons are a sign of power and might they voluntarily renounce nuclear weapons not because other states are saying you're not allowed to have these weapons because you're

just some developing country that can't be trusted you know these countries are saying we don't want these weapons because they're inhumane and should be banned because it would be a crime against humanity to use them and that's why using them is out of the question even threatening the use of nuclear weapons is out of the question. but a signature does not guarantee compliance we see that right now with the nuclear deal with iran which president trump would evidently like to rip to shreds what would happen then and. that would be utterly irresponsible what donald trump is saying about the agreement is total nonsense it's really incredible because iran has been complying with the deal and the agreement was a triumph of diplomacy. and trump won't achieve a thing if he goes ahead and pulls out because iran will go ahead and build a nuclear bomb and that will trigger a chain reaction. iran's neighbors will want

a nuclear bomb. the next in line is saudi arabia and it'll go on and on until in a few years time we'll have a world in which there are not nine nuclear powers like today but maybe twenty or even thirty. it'll be a much more unstable and dangerous world. and if there is an incident it could cost the lives of many millions of people and the mention in talk of but surely you would miss that the security guaranteed by an agreement is virtually nil if you're dealing with two highly strung and malevolent parties one hundred activity resting . on the international law is only as strong as the people who enforce it. it's not the case that the treaty now adopted by the un the treaty on the program bishan of nuclear weapons is purely symbolic it includes verification mechanisms and control mechanisms which the case of iran shows already functioning relatively well.

it's easier to verify nuclear weapons than it is other weapons of mass destruction biological or chemical weapons. and the fact that iran didn't succeed in its nuclear program shows that these.